Stallman urges Europeans to fight patent legislation

Civil liberties are under attack in Europe in the form of software
legislation and cyber-crime codes, open source software guru Richard
Stallman
warned this weekend.

Stallman called on like-minded Europeans to organize themselves to
fight the new legislation, speaking at a two-day conference hosted by
the Flemish Free University of
Brussels.

"It is going to be necessary to organize yourselves politically to
change government policy," he told a packed auditorium of students and
Linux devotees Saturday.

The European Commission, the European Union's executive body, is the
main culprit in eroding civil liberties, he said. "The part of the
Commission in charge of deciding
how to shape European patenting laws for the software industry isn't
the part that's in charge of software development," he said. "If it
isn't stopped it will push the EU to
adopt a software patent directive."

Stallman advised his audience to educate European parliamentarians
who, he said "don't understand the issue at all." He also recommended
aiming the anti-software
patenting campaign at national governments.

The European Parliament and national government ministers would have
to approve any Europe-wide legislation on software patenting. Stallman
said one encouraging sign
is that German and French governments appear to be set against such
legislation. "There is still hope," he said.

"Big U.S. corporations and the U.S. government -- their servant --
are pushing hard for Europe to accept software patents," Stallman
said. "You have to work together to
fight this."

However, even if the pressure from the US is not successful, European
civil liberties could still be jeopardized by the proposed Hague
Treaty, an international doctrine
being drafted by the EU and countries including the U.S. The Hague
Treaty would allow companies in one country with software patents to
defend those patents in another
country that doesn't have such laws. "This could be very dangerous
for European software developers," Stallman said.

The cyber-crime initiative launched last month by the Commission
poses specific threats to civil liberties, he said. "Some software
reverse engineering would be prohibited
under this code," Stallman said. "There are other dangers to civil
liberties in this code too," he added. [See "EU unveils plan to fight
cybercrime,"Jan. 30.)

The Commission's paper on cyber-crime proposes a number of
legislative and non-legislative actions. Legislative proposals include
harmonizing member states' laws. In
the short term, those relating to child pornography offenses and
incitement to racism will be targeted, and in the longer term the
commission will bring forward proposals to
harmonize criminal law on high-tech crime, including hacking and
denial of service attacks.

Stallman's 75 minute-long speech captivated the 500-strong audience.
It mostly laid out his well-known views on why patents are
inappropriate to software. Software
design, he said, is fundamentally different from tangible physical
design, which he agreed should be patentable.

First, there are no revolutionary leaps forward in software design,
but incremental steps forward, building on previous ideas.

Second, software designers don't have to deal with the problems faced
by working with matter. "Matter is perverse," Stallman said.
"Engineers dealing with matter face a
whole level of difficulty that we don't face."

Third, Stallman pointed out that unlike designers of physical things
"software designers don't need a factory to produce their ideas. "We
just press 'copy'," he said.

The message was deadly serious, but the delivery was true to Stallman
form: he kicked off his sneakers at the start and conducted the
session in blue socks and brown
slacks with a sopranino recorder (a flute-like musical instrument)
sticking out of his right pocket and a crinkled burgundy polo shirt
that stretched over his round belly. His
long, curly hair swayed to and fro as he gesticulated generously with
his arms to make his point.

He ended the speech on a humorous note by introducing St IGNUcius,
his reverend alter ego. He reached for a plastic supermarket bag on
the desk beside him and
produced a black embroidered poncho and an old computer disc platter.
He slipped the poncho over his head and attached the platter to the
crown of his head, halo-like, and
recited: "There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its
kernels. Sainthood in the Church of Emacs requires living a life of
purity -- but in the Church of Emacs, this
does not require celibacy. Being holy in our church means installing
a wholly free operating system and not putting any non-free software
on your computer. Join the Church
of Emacs, and you too can be a saint!"

Copyright 2018 IDG Communications. ABN 14 001 592 650. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of IDG Communications is prohibited.